A series of accidents leaves the Black Sheep with only 14 viable aircraft. Colonel Lard continues his campaign to catch the squadron flying at less than combat status and Greg's plan to get his hands on another bird is crazier than anything he's done yet. When things go sideways, the 214's embedded war correspondent Kate Cameron takes matters into her own hands. This is the story of Corsair #403, which I referenced in "New Horizons." Enjoy! Thanks for reading, reviews welcome!
Chapter 1: The Reunion
Summer, 1960
Tahoe Vista, California
Kate Boyington sat on the pickup tailgate near the end of the airstrip, one hand idly scratching the dog leaning against her and the other gripping a pair of binoculars. She took her hand off the dog to push impatiently at the tangle of curls the breeze had pulled loose from her ponytail. The ponytail, plus her T-shirt and faded Levis jeans made her look younger than her 39 years. She swung her feet idly, scanning the blue dome of the sky and humming Glenn Miller's "In The Mood." The dog cocked her head. She was a pretty creature, half of her face solid black, the other half a swirling mix of blue merle fur. One eye was blue, the other brown.
"It was a hit, you know, back in the day," Kate informed her. The dog looked doubtful.
Kate hummed the opening riff of the big band era classic, breaking off as a sound caught her ear, a distant whine coming from the north. Raising the binoculars, she searched until she found it, a dark speck against the cloudless blue over the Sierras. A smile broke across her face as the speck grew larger and the familiar gull-winged shape of a Chance Vought F4U Corsair came into focus as it barreled down the valley.
The sight and sound carried her back in time to a tiny South Pacific island and the Marine fighter squadron who called it home that summer in 1943. All she had to do was close her eyes and she was there again. The tropical breeze tinged with the scent of aviation fuel and airplane exhaust. The shout of mechanics on the flight line. The interminable leaking tents. Outdoor showers. Air raids. Mud and mosquitoes and a constant shortage of everything. A man with blue eyes that left her breathless and a smile that held her heart. Waking up in his arms made it all bearable.
The plane was almost on her now, a scant 300 feet above the ground. The massive propeller blades chewed through the air and Kate could hear the distinctive throb of the 2,000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine. The trademark whistle was music to her ears.
The dog did not share either Kate's appreciation of vintage aircraft or her stroll down memory lane. She shoved her head under Kate's arm, trembling as the plane roared overhead.
"Get used to it, Spirit." Kate gave the dog an affectionate squeeze. "You're gonna be hearing it a lot."
The plane swooped into a steep climb and executed a series of stomach-churning barrel rolls before diving sharply. Kate caught her breath, held it, then let it out on a long exhale as the plane pulled up, leveled off and soared back up the valley, the pilot putting the machine through a series of lazy maneuvers that left her smiling. The noise of the engine echoed in her bones even as the plane faded again into the distance. The dog let out an audible sigh of relief.
God, that was a rush, Kate thought, lowering the binocs. She would never, ever in her life, tire of watching that man fly. She couldn't suppress a smile, remembering how she hadn't appreciated that particular skill when they first met. That man. Commanding officer. Fighter pilot. Ace. Friend. Confidant. Lover. POW. Husband. Father. Soul mate.
It was a gift, she thought as the plane reappeared, his ability to finesse even the most decrepit craft into airworthiness with the touch of his hand. Heaven knew he'd had enough practice. This old warbird purred like a kitten but there was no denying she'd seen better days. Still, the government had been reluctant to part with her and it had taken every ounce of Greg's won't-take-no-for-an-answer persuasion and under-the-table dealing to have it routed to their place near Lake Tahoe instead of the boneyard in the Arizona desert where it was destined to rust quietly into oblivion.
"I see he got it up." A teasing voice startled her out of her reverie and Kate turned to see a slender woman about her age with elegant carriage and strawberry blonde hair approaching. "John said you were out here."
"Hey, Tori." Kate grinned and slid over to share the tailgate. "He got it up all right. Did you have any doubt?"
"Never." Tori Hutchinson hoisted herself onto the tailgate on the other side of the dog, who wiggled her butt in greeting. The two women and the dog sat, watching as the plane carved lazy figure eights in the afternoon sky.
"Is it, um, a good idea to be flying that thing?"
"No," Kate sighed. "Not really. But you know Greg – that never stopped him." After they'd been reunited at the end of the war in '45, she'd given up worrying about anything Greg Boyington did. She didn't care, as long as they did it together, which was how they'd come to run a charter air service after he left the Marine Corps a few years earlier. It had turned out to be the best decision the family had ever made.
"What did you do with the kids?" Kate asked, looking around. The late summer day sparkled blue and green and gold.
"They took off on horseback about half an hour ago. Your two, our three and a couple more that I'm not sure where they came from."
Kate laughed.
"Neighbor kids. They practically live here. Where'd you leave Hutch?"
"He's back in the hangar on the radio with Greg. I understood about every third word they said. Oil-cooler-flaps-this and elevator-tabs-that. It was like we were back on La Cava." Tori turned her face up to the afternoon sun. "I'm so glad you and Greg put this reunion together," she said without opening her eyes. "I can't wait until everyone else gets here. It's been so long."
Kate grinned.
"I'm glad you and Hutch could come out early. Greg's been like a kid at Christmas, wanting to get that bird in the air again. He took it up a couple of times last fall when it got here, then I made him promise to wait until Hutch could at least give it a once over before he got serious about doing anything with it. Honestly, I have no idea what he's going to do with it." She shaded eyes. "Once everyone else gets here for the reunion, they'll all want a turn. It's a good thing we're so far from town. No close neighbors to complain when the crazy starts."
The two women sat in silence, petting the dog, who wiggled with contentment.
"Joy wants to fly it," Kate said resignedly. There was no doubt what it was. "She turns 17 this summer and she's more excited about getting her pilot's license than she is about her driver's license. She's solo'd in the Cessna. Greg said he'd let her fly that thing after she got a few more hours under her belt. I told him it better be a thousand more hours of flying for her and a thousand more hours of rebuilding for that bird. She goes out now and sits in it." Her sigh blended pride and exasperation. "She's her dad's girl, no mistake."
Kate gestured toward the plane, which begun to lower toward the airstrip.
"Come on, let's go back. It looks like he's setting down." She squinted, blinked and snapped the binoculars up again. "Shit. He's on fire!"
Tori leaped off the tailgate and both women and the dog piled into the cab of the 1952 Ford F150. Kate dropped the truck into gear and they headed back toward the single large hangar and cluster of outbuildings that comprised Boyington Charter Air Service.
The plane dropped toward the strip and touched down with feather lightness in spite of white smoke billowing from under the cowling. The pilot cut the engine and the big fighter's momentum carried it several hundred more yards before it coasted to a halt.
As Kate pulled the pickup to a stop, a lean, dark-haired man bolted out of the open hangar door with a hand-held fire extinguisher.
"Hey, Hutch, I brought her back smoking for old time's sake!" the pilot called, shoving the canopy open. The humor in his tone indicated the situation wasn't serious. He climbed nimbly out of the cockpit, scrambled onto the wing and dropped to the ground. A fog of sodium bicarbonate engulfed the engine as John "Hutch" Hutchinson blasted it with the extinguisher.
Shaking her head, Kate folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the pickup's grill. Tori joined her. The dog raced to meet the man, launching from a few feet away for him to catch her in mid-air. He gave the dog a hug then set her back on the ground where she spun in ecstatic circles.
Colonel Greg Boyington, USMC Ret., pulled off his helmet and sunglasses, revealing dark hair shot through with gray. He smiled, blue eyes sparkling with an energy that belied his 52 years. Dimples creased his cheeks and in spite of the choking cloud of smoke emanating from the engine, Kate thought he looked delighted.
"Old girl flew like a dream until she overheated," Greg called cheerfully. "Oil temp went up in a hurry and hit red-line before I could set down. You need a hand, Hutch? Hey, Katie, grab that other extinguisher. There's one in the back of the truck."
"Nah, I got it." Hutch gave a final blast with the extinguisher. "Some things never change, huh?" He shot both women a grin.
Greg strode over and wrapped an arm around Kate's waist. She could feel the adrenaline radiating off him. It did feel like the old times, meeting him and the other Black Sheep on the line after a mission, the air charged with testosterone and the high arousal state of men who thought themselves to be – for the moment – immortal.
Kate stretched up on her toes to give him a quick peck on the cheek. Greg tossed helmet and glasses onto the hood of the pickup, then wrapped his hands around her waist and took her mouth in a hard kiss. She responded without hesitation, sliding her arms around his neck and giving herself to the heat of embrace. How many missions had ended like this during the war – those hot, heartfelt kisses as she welcomed him back, affirming survival and love while the Black Sheep cheered and made rude suggestions in the background.
"Get a room, you two," Tori said with a sideways glance.
Greg pulled back.
"Some things get better with time." He winked at Tori and nodded toward Hutch. "I imagine you know that."
Hutch brandished the extinguisher.
"God knows how old the oil is in that crankcase and I'd bet those hoses haven't been changed since Truman got elected. Some things might get better with time, Greg, but this ain't one of them. You're not taking this bird up again until I've pulled the engine apart." He shot a look at Kate and grinned. "Katie'll kill me if you kill yourself."
Greg ignored him. He slung an arm around Kate's waist and turned back toward the plane, which sat, looking elegantly decrepit. Hutch blasted the engine with a final shot and set down the extinguisher.
"That's her, Hutch, number 403," Greg said quietly. "You can barely read the number, it's partially painted over, but it's her. We've known it since Bennett ferried her up here from Arizona last fall but we haven't told anyone else."
Kate, who knew the significance of the plane's number, watched both Hutch and Tori's expressions light up with sudden understanding.
"Are you shittin' me?" Hutch said, staring at the plane as though he were seeing it for the first time.
"Isn't that the one . . .?" Tori's question faded. Hutch stepped up next to his wife.
"Yeah, that's the one Greg stole from the Navy after TJ got splashed near Kahili in '43," Kate said.
"I didn't steal it. Exactly." Greg's expression was angelic. "Besides, I had help. You three were there, too."
"Yeah," Hutch muttered. "I was there, all right. In the brig, right alongside you."
"I stand corrected," Kate said with mild sarcasm. "You didn't steal it - you borrowed it. And forgot to take it back."
"I didn't forget, sweetheart. I just plain didn't take it back it. There were extenuating circumstances." Greg's grin was broader than ever now.
Kate caught Tori's eye.
"On your feet, Corporal!" she barked. The former Navy nurse began laughing. Kate joined her, slowly at first, then with increasing intensity. Soon both women were leaning against their men, wiping away tears and gasping for breath.
"Oh God," Kate said, clutching her stomach. "On your feet, Corporal! There were so many ways that could have gone sideways and I thought we were all going to get court martialed. I will never forget walking into the brig at 0500 and scaring the crap out of that poor kid."
"Neither will I, Lieutenant Commander," Tori said darkly. "That stunt was nearly the end of all our careers. So help me," she jabbed a finger at Hutch and Greg, "you are not telling that story in front of the kids – our kids, your kids, anybody's kids. They don't need to know everything we did in the war. They think we're a bunch of old fuddy-duddies and I think that might be for the best."
"They wouldn't believe us anyway," Hutch said. "I still can't believe we pulled that off. Of all the Black Sheep capers, that had to be the best."
"I was sure glad to see the two of you that morning." Greg shook his head at the memory. "Talk about angels of mercy."
"Angels of mercy? More like angels of scared shitless. If that wasn't living proof love makes you do stupid things, I don't know what is," Kate said archly.
Hutch slid an arm around Tori's shoulders and looked at Kate.
"If it hadn't been for you two getting us out of there, I don't know what would have happened," he said.
"It would have been the end of the Black Sheep, for damn sure," Greg recalled. "We were down to14 planes we could put in the air with reasonable expectation of them staying there and Lard was trying to catch us out every chance he got."
"Damn TJ. That whole thing was his fault in the first place," Hutch mused. "He's coming for the reunion, right?"
"He'll be here with Helen and the kids at the end of the week. I told Helen he owes me a case of Scotch when she called to say they were coming," Kate said. "That caper took at least 10 years off my life. Stealing -" she cut her eyes to Greg and amended, " – borrowing that plane in the first place, then again when Lard came looking for it the next day."
"You and me both, Cameron," Greg said, a bemused look on his face. "If I hadn't been in love with you before, that would have done it. Nothing like having your girl break you out of the brig and help you steal a plane."
"Ha," Kate said. "So you finally admit it. You did steal it."
Greg shrugged.
"Desperate times called for desperate measures," he said loftily. "Hutch and I just did what we had to do."
"Desperate measures," Tori said with a dainty snort. "I thought both of you guys were mental."
"Yeah. They were. And we were right there with them." Kate's voice was soft with the memory.
She looked at the quietly smoking plane, its patchwork paint etched by the erosion of time. It was like a portal to another dimension. she thought. Standing in the sunshine with Greg's hand warm around her waist and Tori and Hutch sharing their laughter, Kate let the memory carry her back.
XXX
August 1943
Vella La Cava, VMF 214 HQ
On the beach, 0530 hours
Kate "K.C." Cameron had woken up in some odd places during her career as a photographer and reporter for the Associated Press.
The 22-year-old war correspondent had awoken in the London underground during the Blitz with her head on a stranger's shoulder and her arms around a small child nestled in her lap.
Beneath a Hawker Hurricane on an RAF base at Leanach, Scotland, with a pounding hangover and vivid memories of a discussion about what a Scotsman wore under his kilt. The Scotsman in question had woken up next to her. She had the answer to her question.
And once, to her immense confusion, in the bunk of the commanding officer on the base where she was now serving as an embedded war correspondent. Although, she reflected, that had resolved itself nicely.
But her current situation might be the oddest yet.
She was on the beach of the South Pacific island that served as the base for USMC fighter squadron VMF 214, the Black Sheep. The fact she was a woman posted with an all-male unit had initially been the result of miscommunication and assumption. It had continued thanks to deliberate subterfuge, skillful timing and a complete disregard of regulations.
After an initially rocky introduction to the squadron, no one – including her – had seen fit to bring her female status to the attention of anyone higher up the chain of command. What the brass on Espritos Marcos didn't know, wouldn't hurt them. The fact Colonel Thomas Lard had assigned her to the 214 without ever meeting her was his problem, the Black Sheep agreed, not hers. Lard had erroneously presumed K.C. was short for Kevin Charles or something similar, not Katherine Christine.
Either way, Lard's signature was clear on the agreement with the Associated Press even if the man's own personal agenda in stationing a member of the press corps with the Black Sheep was considerably hazier. After a fair amount of suspicion and distrust by all parties involved, it had become clear where Kate's allegiances lay – personal as well as professional.
Kate blinked. It was near dawn. The sky to the east shimmered with the rose glow promise of the coming day. It wasn't like she'd never woken up on the beach before. She and Major Greg Boyington, the CO of the 214, spent the night on one of the island's private beaches whenever they needed to escape the fishbowl atmosphere of the base. The beach was their go-to spot for time alone, whether it was unwinding with a bottle or sharing something more intimate.
But honestly, the circumstances of her waking on this particular morning were a first.
Kate was curled on her left side, her face comfortably against Greg's chest. His left hand was draped around her waist, the heat of his body dispelling the slight chill of the morning air. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, she thought. She'd woken this way more than once with him and the only thing even remotely odd was that they both still had their clothes on – her, shorts and a sleeveless shirt that had been part of one of the boys' uniforms in another life and him, a T-shirt and fatigues. She felt the rise and fall of his steady breathing, the warmth of his hand. His head was pillowed on his right arm. Her own hands were curled in front of her. Meatball, Greg's white bull terrier had snuggled himself in between their legs like a furry hot water bottle.
None of which accounted for warmth of the body pressed close behind her. Or the hand on her rump. The hand wasn't doing anything untoward but Kate wasn't sure who it belonged to. It seemed, in her half asleep, slightly hungover state, its placement was a little presumptuous since she did not remember giving anyone permission to put it there. She was still getting comfortable with the idea of waking up with one man outdoors. She had no intention of making it a habit to wake up with more than that, especially when she didn't know who the second party in question was.
Her mind searched through the alcohol soaked mist of the previous night, trying to resolve both the issue of the anonymous – and uninvited – warm body spooning hers as well as the reason she was waking with Greg, fully-clad, on the beach. Seriously, she needed to stop drinking so much. It didn't help the 214 was a hub for some of the best Scotch traveling through the South Pacific. The stuff flowed like water and she was as much of a connoisseur as any of the boys in the unit.
Then it slammed into her with the impact of an exploding grenade.
TJ had been shot down the day before.
The sense of loss washed over her, bringing her fully awake but immobile.
Lieutenant TJ Wiley had been shot down during a tangled dogfight near Kahili. No one had seen a parachute and it was unclear if he had jumped clear of his fatally wounded aircraft. They were over enemy waters at the time. There'd been no way to have air-sea rescue pick him up.
It wasn't the first time one of the Black Sheep had been lost. Living with a fighter squadron, it came with the territory, even though the boys rarely talked about it. There existed an unspoken understanding that if they didn't put it into words, it couldn't happen. There was no room for admission of vulnerability among the men when the very act of climbing into the cockpit every day painted a target on their backs. They drank, laughed, flirted and fought like there was no tomorrow because for some of them, there wasn't.
She just didn't think it would ever be TJ. By his own admission, the kid wasn't the best pilot she'd ever known but he'd improved by leaps and bounds and even had a few kills. Like all the rest of the Black Sheep, he was an impossible combination of innocence and scheming and skill who could wrap his arm around a nurse and pull her in for a kiss or land a punch in the Sheep Pen and send an offender flying out the door. She could hear his voice, teasing her into dancing with him the very first night she'd arrived on La Cava. It seemed like eons ago. Now he was gone.
The boys had built a fire on the beach and sat in a kind of vigil, drinking and telling stories until the bottles ran dry and they staggered back to their tents or passed out where they lay. Captain Jim Gutterman had taken it exceptionally hard. TJ had been his wingman, for better or worse, since the squadron formed. In the early days, there had been a lot of worse but the two had bonded with that inseparable sense of trust that forms when a man holds himself accountable for another man's safety. Jim had been blasting an enemy fighter out of the sky when TJ's plane took the fatal shot. He had been inconsolable.
The night's vigil hadn't been a memorial. Not yet. Not until they had definitive word TJ had been declared killed in action. Until then, they clung silently to a faint thread of hope that he was still alive and waiting to be rescued. Kate knew she and Greg could have faded away to their spot, a secluded cove where they both could have poured the sorrow of the squadron's loss into their lovemaking but his men needed him here. And, she knew in her soul, he needed to be with them. Loving a fighter pilot was a chancy proposition. No matter how intensely they loved one another, his men would always hold part of his heart. It was one of the reasons she'd fallen in love with him in the first place. He might be a rogue with a complete lack of regard for regulations but the man's sense of honor was sterling.
Kate struggled with denial. TJ couldn't be gone. He just couldn't. He had to be floating around somewhere in the South Pacific or washed up on one of the thousands of coral atolls that dotted the theater. They'd find him. They had to find him. He was too irresistibly charming to have died when his plane smashed into the ocean and broke into a million pieces.
Her mind came full circle, back to the problem of the hand on her backside. Regretfully, she rolled away from the warmth of Greg's body and sat up, dislodging Meatball and shoving the errant hand back at its owner. It turned out to be none less than Jim Gutterman. The dark-haired Texan, one of Greg's executive officers and a hard-drinking, womanizing, all-around troublemaker who would give his life for anyone in the unit – including her - didn't wake up. Instead he reached out and wrapped his fingers around Kate's bare leg instead. Kate was ready to throttle him. She had her doubts about how sound asleep he really was.
"Pappy!" An excited voice issued from the near distance. Kate heard boots pounding on the sand. "Hey! Everyone! Wake up! Good news!"
Lieutenant Larry Casey's tow-headed figure appeared, running pell-mell down the trailhead onto the beach. Kate blinked and looked her watch. 0540. Somehow, Casey managed to be in uniform, shaved and hair combed, even though she knew he'd been drinking just as hard any of the boys the previous night. How did he do that? According to Casey's steady girl, Dee Ryan, who was one of Kate's best friends and a nurse at the Navy hospital on the island, he was equally always prepared for any contingency on land, sea or air. Any contingency, Dee had said with a wink and a blush.
"TJ's alive!" Casey hollered as the men rolled to consciousness, groaning and stretching. Here and there, a few nurses were waking up next to their boys. "The Navy fished him out! He's on the Yorktown, a little beat up but he's okay!"
"That's great news, Casey, but the Yorktown? Isn't she about a hundred clicks south of where he went down? How the hell'd he end up there?" Kate heard the relief in Greg's whisky roughened voice and felt the news wash away her own sorrow. Another of the Black Sheep had dodged the bullet, literally.
"I know – I don't know!" Casey was practically jumping up and down. "But he's all right. They'll send him back as soon as they can."
Jim woke, blinking, but didn't offer to move his hand. Kate moved it for him for the second time.
"Damn it, Gutterman! Get your hands off me."
"Sorry, darlin'." The Texan rolled to a sit. "I was having a wonderful dream."
"I'm happy for you but I don't want any part of it."
"Too late."
Jim gave her a friendly leer and Kate narrowed her eyes at him. She was undeniably Greg's girl and Jim would never do anything that might get him some bent teeth but he'd push the envelope with her every chance he got. It had become a game with them. Kate knew Greg could put a stop to it with one word – or one swing – but Jim was harmless enough even though she wasn't at her best at this hour. Honestly, she didn't mind the boys' teasing. It was often gallows humor and she wouldn't begrudge any of them a few minutes of flirting when all their lives were so uncertain.
"Don't kill him, Cameron." Greg must have seen the quick flare of temper in her eyes. "I've got enough paperwork to deal with the way it is. And now I've got to come up with another plane." He scrubbed a hand over his face and Kate could tell his mind was already sorting through and discarding options.
She marveled for the hundredth time at the man's ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol and still be clear-eyed and functional within seconds of waking. Granted, it was an ability they both shared, just one of the threads woven through the tapestry of their relationship in spite of the 13 year age difference. When they first met, she hadn't wanted any part of him beyond the cooperation forced on them both by her posting to his unit. His feeling about her had been mutual. Those feelings had changed.
Greg squeezed Kate's arm and stood up. He extended a hand to her and pulled her upright. She read the relief radiating from his smile. TJ was the whole squadron's self-improvement project but none of the pilots had helped him more – or believed in him more - than Greg.
"Damn it, Wiley," Jim muttered. He was still sitting on the blanket, cradling his head as if it might fall off. "I was drinking like you was dead and now you got the balls to turn up alive and I got to fly with a damned hangover today."
"All right, you meatheads," Greg called out, "get up, let's go! We've still got a mission to fly at 0900. Casey, you'll take A Flight. I'll take B Flight. We're a man short until we get TJ back so I want everyone on top of their game. You've got three hours to catch some rack time or load up on coffee. Briefing at 0830. Let's roll."
Around her, men began staggering back toward the base. Kate fell into line, fantasizing about vats of steaming coffee as the sun burst over the horizon to shower the beach in a sparkle of gold.
Just another day in paradise, she thought. Another sunrise, another mission and now they'd be flying it with one less pilot. The loss of TJ's plane dropped them to 14 viable aircraft, one short of the number required for the squadron to maintain combat status. That was another thing the brass on Espritos didn't need to know.
XXX
That was the thing about life with the Black Sheep. Honestly to God, you never knew what was going to happen next. It's bad enough when you're living in a war zone to start with but those boys had a way of making even the most ordinary day memorable. Which wasn't always a good thing. - Kate
To be continued